Saudi Arabia got pummeled by cross-border Houthi ballistic missiles and drones on Tuesday, where a reported four Saudi cities were targeted.
...So what about those much hyped Mecca Defense accords that were just signed last month? The pact between Riyadh, Islamabad, and Ankara has been likened to NATO Article 5, where an attack on one is an 'attack on all'. These countries' own officials have in many cases advanced this interpretation.
As the Saudi-Yemen war heats up again, Pakistan is threatening just such a triggering of the Mecca Defense Pact, but so far this has stopped at mere words.
Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif threatened in Wednesday remarks that the Ansarallah attacks "could trigger" the defense agreement.
"Under the trilateral agreement, any aggression against any of the three [countries] is regarded as an aggression against all. There is no ambiguity about that," the Pakistani minister told Geo News.
He underscored that the ongoing Houthi retaliations "could trigger the pact" between the three regional nations, after over 70 people were wounded on the Saudi side, which heavily targeted energy infrastructure, and resulted in flight stoppages at major Saudi flight hubs.
Another key aspect to the new pact is that it further formalizes Pakistan's nuclear umbrella for Saudi Arabia, which lacks atomic weapons. Turkey does not have its own nukes either, but plays host to US nuclear weapons as part of NATO. Turkey maintains the second-largest military within the NATO alliance, behind the United States.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia already had a bilateral defense pact before the Mecca agreement, which has lately seen Islamabad deploy 8,000 troops, a squadron of fighter jets, and an air defense system to Saudi Arabia.
But the Houthis are warning of more attacks to come, also as the 'siege for siege' policy is still on against the kingdom, aimed at curtailing its vital energy exports.
The Houthis have newly released footage of an operation showing Saudi military equipment en route to Riyadh’s proxies being Yemen, coming under heavy fire and being blown up.
The Iran-aligned Yemeni group is also newly vowing to stave off the Saudi aerial attack, after Riyadh declared the end goal is to eject the Houthis from Sanaa. One excuse or way out of not choosing to trigger the Mecca pact could center on the fact that the Houthis are a non-state actor, or at least are not 'recognized' as a legitimate government on an international level.